


Companion

by idgit_with_a_fidget



Category: Doctor Who, Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Companions, Kidlock, TARDIS - Freeform, The skull - Freeform, Wholock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-31
Updated: 2013-03-31
Packaged: 2017-12-07 02:30:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/743140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/idgit_with_a_fidget/pseuds/idgit_with_a_fidget
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A young Sherlock is woken up by a mysterious noise with a mysterious blue light, and meets an even more mysterious man.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Companion

Moon. Bright and big and beautiful and bulbous and brilliant. Moon. A near euphonious word; a single shining beat. Monosyllabic moon. An acquiescely argent emblem of aesthetic absolution and…and…um…

The boy Sherlock lay in his bed. He was snuggled underneath the crinkled white duvet sheet staring at the slicing razors of moonlight that filtered through his blinds, creating scissor-like patterns on the opposite walls, white and precise; a light, so sharp you could cut your finger on it. He puzzled over his alliteration, struggling to gather any more impressive 'a' words to graft onto the end of the frayed sentence. He chewed his lip and peered up at the warped ceiling as a source of inspiration. Up there was a dark, choppy and other-worldly sea where the waves were made of worms and snail shells painted an opaque blue-black, and they writhed and wriggled, hardly moving at all, creating static swirls and stagnant contours. What had originally been imprinted onto plaster during the day was a completely different and altered landscape by night, aleatoric and illogical. It was as though the entire room morphed into its own independent creature as soon as the sun set. Lamps became pencil-thin gentlemen with tall hats; the wooden stool by the desk became a squat, geometrical horse/dog creature, frozen eternally by its oak limbs through which the wood grains curled into sinister snake-like shapes, hissing and squirming like oil on water. The clothes on the floor is a pile of evil and bad dreams that have collected in the corner to discuss tonight's plans; the pen pot is a hedgehog; the computer screen is an eye that sleeps as you watch, and only opens its eye when you close yours. A world of shadows.

The boy Sherlock was about to give up on finding that final 'a' word and ditch his metaphorical sewing kit. He turned over onto his side, curling his back towards the window and shielding his eyes from the moonlight. He closed his eyes and he saw shapes, blobby and strange, waiting for him. He opened them again. Around, the house was living. The odd dull spasmodic pop of the boiler, the surge of water through copper pipes, the groans and clicks of the foundations as they supported the walls like Atlas supports the Earth. There was a rumour that houses expand and contract with heat. Sherlock liked to think that the house was breathing. He tried to match his own breath with the creaks of the household, imagined himself as the walls, but the gaps between sighs were too lengthy, and his lungs began to protest. 

In his mind's eye, in his ideal world, he was the only one in the house, the only little boy in the world, the universe, maybe. He wandered, he discovered, he adventured. In this world there was no Mummy, no Dad, no Mycroft. Just Sherlock. Free to explore and mosey and do whatever he pleased. No restraints, no grounding, no scolding or reductions in pocket money. Just Sherlock and the world. Together for ever. He'd travel to the beginning of her, in this world, and then to her end, and all the little bits in between and revisit the parts he liked best; the rise of the Romans, the first Olympic games, last Saturday when he found a frog in the creek, still croaking and ribbiting. He was always alone, in this world, and nobody ever saw him. The Invisible Boy. Nobodylock. Mycroft always said he'd have trouble making friends, and so perhaps this Nobodylock's world wasn't so bad. He could do anything.

The boy Sherlock closed his eyes again and nuzzled into the pillow, muffling the sounds of the brickwork. He thought about sleep, and the frog and then for a fleeting moment: life and the future and what it held. And then nothing at all. 

Suddenly, the shapes behind his eyelids dissolved into a glowing, luminescent pantone blue, and the sounds of dreamscape roared a deep, whooshing: VWORP. Sherlock snapped his eyes open. Chromatic scale, he remembered from his violin lessons. He sat upright and cupped his hands to his face, watching with abstract awe as the silver moonlight was dyed a brash cyan. Scrambling to the window, feet treading lightly over the strewn jumpers, he peeped out down into the back garden. He caught his breath and his eyes grew wide and grey, reflecting the light. Down in the garden, shrouded in shrubbery from next door's curious ferns and bathed in the orange glow of adjacent, eavesdropping street lamps, stood a rather wonderfully average telephone box; a police one to be exact. The boy Sherlock had seen them before, but they were dogged and ageing, greying and dying out. People weren't using them as regularly anymore. Hadn't for a while, he reckoned. But now, to unexpectedly have one seemingly materialise itself in his back garden, was…was…

He wasn't sure what else it could be described as but 'cool'.

The boy Sherlock didn't bother wasting time grabbing and throwing on his dressing gown as he hurtled from his bedroom, plunging into the gloom of the midnight household. He reduced his speed to a sneaking tip-toe like monster hunters in cartoons, and listened intently, straining his ears. He heard breathing; deep and quiet. That would be Mummy. Accompanied by harsh, reverberating snoring. That was Dad. And then from Mycroft's room, a smacking, kissy noise followed by a forced sigh. His mouth was probably glued shut with morning-goo again. All was quiet. The coast was clear. 

The boy Sherlock pressed on, the shadows skittering away from his ankles to cower as he crept, feeling brave and bold and shivering with excitement. Now he really felt like the only one in the world; pacing through the home of those cursed into eternal slumber. He was king of the twilight, ruler of the Witching Hour, and was now on his way to greet a visitor, or even perhaps an enemy. He hoped it wasn't an enemy; he had no weapon. The stairs whispered their squeaks in pathetic persistence to scare him away, warn that he might get caught, but the boy Sherlock wasn't to be deterred. Every now and again the blue shone through from a light source or available window like a superhero's beacon. The boy Sherlock followed it into the kitchen, bare toes turning cold from the laminated linoleum flooring. He could feel the hum of the fridge ripple and crawl over his skin and bones, and he felt the house's presence inside of him swell. Such fun exploring was, he thought, every rhythm of brick pounding in his mind; to feel as though the house was his body or his soul, to listen to its strange and foreign language. It was alien. 

He found the keys for the back door in a drawer beside the scissors and a used roll of sticky tape. He fitted them into the lock with ease, and his small fist froze around the handle of the door. He hesitated and looked over one shoulder. He thought of his parents sleeping and what they were dreaming about, and what they might say if they discovered him out of bed at this hour. The clock was clouded by more shadow, unintelligible. The boy Sherlock took a deep breath and levered the handle downwards. 

The cold of the night nibbled at him. The face of the moon ogled down upon his own cheeks, and suddenly he felt oddly guilty. This outside world, this external world beyond the house was not his. It belonged to the moon and stars and he was trespassing. The boy Sherlock fiddled anxiously with his pyjamas. The box stood there, cloaked in greenery and dressed in sapphire. It was extraordinarily normal, but then again most normal things are abnormal outside of their context, like seeing a teacher in the supermarket buying the Sunday paper. It was a sign. But of what? The boy Sherlock just stared up at it, marvelling at its size; twice, three times, five, six, seven more than his? He was only little. Suddenly there came a scuffling noise from inside of it and the door was opened gingerly. A man, a real man, stuck his head out and blinked. 

"Hello."

The boy Sherlock's throat dried like a well in drought. He thought he would be startled, or at least a little bit surprised, yet he felt no obvious signs of shock. But then again, maybe that was him experiencing shock? A silence overcame him and the man who leaned awkwardly in the doorway. The faint rustle of leaves on a shadow's yawn was a wild typhoon. The man was tall and skinny, like the lamp-men, and his hair was a spiky brown mess that reared to attention on his forehead like a phalanx of chocolate troops. His eyes were kind and old and sparkled with tender eccentricity, and even when he was not smiling his lips were haunted with the ghosts of giggles and happy times. You could see by his face he was not the usual bystander. Who he was remained a mystery. Would remain a mystery that nobody really wanted to figure out. 

"Is this London?"

The boy Sherlock shook his head. "No. This is my back garden."

"I see. It is very nice."

The man's voice was sincere and pleasant to the ear. Not too deep, but not too high. So many different feelings were woven into his words, so many emotions were stitched intricately into each letter; each syllable was a memory, each punctuation point was another time. Sadness. Glee. Calm. Fear. Acceptance. The clattering of a dropped tambourine. The sound of sighing dust. Sands from another planet. Air from another dimension. The boy Sherlock considered his own voice. Mycroft's was like an acrobat, or a person dangling from a bungee cord. 

The man had opened the door a bit more and was holding a bud from those inquisitive plant-heads between his fingers. It seemed to purse its sepals at him as though pining for a kiss. He smiled as though he understood it. He was dressed in pinstripe, but his shoes were a grubby red. Serenity seemed to hang around his shoulders like a cape. 

"It is bigger on the inside."

The boy Sherlock looked over the stranger's shoulder and into the police box. So it was. 

"Why are you in my garden?" the boy Sherlock asked at last, selecting that question from the rows of others on his tongue waving their hands shouting: Me, me, me! 

The man shrugged his shoulders and laid a hand on the box's side fondly. "She likes surprising me. She takes me everywhere. And everywhen."

The boy Sherlock frowned. "You travel in time?"

"Yes."

The boy Sherlock's insides decided to adopt a funny attitude. Was it jealousy he was feeling towards this stranger? A man who may be just like him; travelling, exploring, no rules to follow except the obvious ones, and even then there were bendable loopholes. A man whose thirst for wanderlust was quenched, a man who had a box that was bigger on the inside. The moon looked down onto the boy Sherlock, and the boy Sherlock bowed his head upon his breast shamefully. He should not let himself feel envy. 

"Are you okay?"

The boy Sherlock gazed up into the eyes of the man. He is not okay. He is lonely. He is suddenly unsure whether or not this is a dream. And he is sad because moments like these never last, cannot thrive in the daylight. 

"No. I am lonely," the boy Sherlock replied. 

The man tilted his head to one side like a sparrow. "So am I. My friends had to go elsewhere. Elsewhen."

"My brother says I will never have friends because I am different."

"That is not true. If anything, you will make friends because you're different."

The boy Sherlock considered this. Illogical. 

"That doesn't make any sense."

The man laughs. Good and short and meaningful. The boy Sherlock feels safe. "Does it have to?" 

The boy Sherlock peered at him again, taking in every detail of him. There was silence. The man must be able to see things in the air that aren't there at all. The envious feeling returns, green and throbbing in the stomach. The man noticed the boy Sherlock's jutting lip. He looked into the box. His eyes are filled with timid affection. 

"How about I make you a promise?" 

The boy Sherlock is sceptical, but nonetheless nodded. The man smiles a smile that promises your wellbeing. This dream, if it is one, will hurt in the day. It feels so vivid. So lucid. 

"I will go into the future and make sure you have a friend, okay?" the man offered. "And I will bring home proof. How does that sound? Might make you feel better."

A worm wriggled blindly in the grass beneath the boy Sherlock's now muddy feet. Mummy will not be pleased. He nodded and then adds 'please' for good measure. He doesn't like the word, it is artificial and manufactured on his lips, but adults seem to appreciate it. The man grinned and puts a finger to mouth. Shush. 

A breeze whimpered and a wind blasted the garden, and the box faded into a haze of blue. The boy Sherlock was left alone in the garden. Time is solid, fixed, frozen around him. He waits. He breathes. He feels detached from the house; it no longer swells inside of his mind. He is exposed. The wait stretches. A life long and filled with waiting. 

Just as his eyelids begin to droop and his muscles begin to sag, there comes the glorious VWORP once more, and the box appears. The man stepped out, something hidden behind his back. He smiled at the boy Sherlock and bows.

"Thank you for having me."

He then walked backwards into the cube, into the endless bowels of corridors without another word, innocence on his features like a mask. 

"Wait!" the boy Sherlock called out with sudden desperation. 

The man paused in the doorway, leaning on arm against the frame. The boy Sherlock looked up at him with childish hope and anticipation. His eyes are raw. 

"Your promise. Did you keep your promise?" he asked. "Please tell me Mycroft is wrong. He's a meanie when he's right. And he's always right..."

The man laughed his nice laugh and ruffled the boy Sherlock's hair. The effect was like a giant stirring up tossed, rowdy waves in a black ocean. The boy Sherlock dipped his chin onto his chest again and clenched his eyes and fists. He blinks up again pleadingly. The man winks one brown eye.

"All the time? I've seen all the time, and I assure you that your big brother isn't always right even half the time. It's just his words. Use the right words and people will believe anything you tell them."

The boy Sherlock didn't regard this advice as interesting.

"So he is wrong? I will have a friend? Even just one will do."

The man smiled his handsome, crooked and guile smile. He swung the skull out from behind his back and handed it to the curious child. He patted its dry smooth crown and nodded sharply. Then, he turned and vanished into the stomach of the brilliant blue box and left the little boy tucked up under his duvet once more, cradling the skull of Dr John Watson to his cheek as the moon created scissor-shapes on the opposite wall.


End file.
